Further to “my last post on idling”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002293.html , I see “via Limited, Inc.”:http://limitedinc.blogspot.com/2004_08_08_limitedinc_archive.html#109202801859090687 that the French electricity company EDF are disciplining an employee (an economist who also happens to be a Lacanian psychoanalyst … only in France!) who has written a book — “Bonjour Paresse”:http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2841862313/qid%3D1092057870/171-4684613-8604262 — on how to skive at work. The Belfast Telegraph “offers some top tips”:http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=548650 :
bq. Skiving off is such an ugly expression. Much more preferable are terms such as ‘zero-tasking’ or ‘enabling real-time back-end utilisation’. For those interested in how to zero-task successfully, here are five hot tips:
bq. 1. Never walk down a corridor without a a document in your hands. People with documents in their hands look like hard-working employees heading for an important meeting.
bq. 2. Make sure you carry home lots of documents at night. This gives the impression you work much harder than you do.
bq. 3. Use your computer to look busy. Try “www.IShouldBeWorking.com”:http://www.ishouldbeworking.com/ or “www.BoredAtWork.com”:http://www.boredatwork.com/ for entertainment. The I Should Be Working site has a neat panic button that instantly transfers you to a more business-like page with one click.
bq. 4. Build huge piles of documents around your workspace as only top management can get away with a clean desk. Last year’s work looks just like this year’s – volume counts.
bq. 5. If you have voicemail on your phone, don’t answer it. Let the callers leave a message. Try to return the calls when you know the callers aren’t there. In the end they’ll try to find a solution that doesn’t involve you.
{ 8 comments }
a different chris 08.09.04 at 2:56 pm
My wife basically relies on an advanced version of #4, where she makes a big show of taking a folder off the right-hand pile, slowing paging through it with a mechanical pencil poised for action, then moving it to the left-hand pile.
Once the left-hand pile has gotten to be substantially larger than the right, and nobody is looking, she switches piles.
If she worked for me I would so fire her ass… :>
Ben 08.09.04 at 3:48 pm
#6 Work odd hours, and claim to go to lots of meetings away from your desk. Schedule these meetings, if they exist at all, at the time when your co-workers are most likely to need you. This means colleagues get dumped with work and you are plausibly able to claim no knowledge of ongoing projects (Copyright: My old boss)
#7 Be competent at your very core task and utterly useless at everything else (e.g. using any software), thereby making collagues push work, even your chores, elsewhere. (Copyright: My sales team)
#8 Be mysterious about your role. This makes people respect you as a specialist, but enables you to turn away anything that isn’t your job. (Copyright: My old colleague)
Tim B. 08.09.04 at 4:33 pm
I’m reminded of an incident at work years ago. Steve and I had adjoining cubicles, and one morning I heard his phone ringing and ringing and ringing. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I got up and peered around the partition. Steve was leaning back in his chair, fingers interlocked in his lap, and staring at the noisesome phone. “Steve,” I asked, “why aren’t you picking that up?” To which he casually replied: “If I answered it too quickly, they’d think I wasn’t doing anything.”
jimbo 08.09.04 at 5:24 pm
Number 1 was one of George Costanza’s standbys. He also was partial to the “when in a public area, let loose with a sigh” strategy – it makes you look put upon…
Telford 08.09.04 at 8:31 pm
EDP accuses her of “spreading gangrene through the system from within”.
LOL! I love it!
No, we Lacanian Maos are not dead.
Thlayli 08.09.04 at 11:13 pm
#9 Download a long comment thread (Atrios and Kevin Drum are the best sources for these). The comment windows easily stash under other applications, and as a bonus a check of the firewall logs will not show you constantly accessing the Interweb.
will 08.10.04 at 5:15 am
As I recall, the author of a book called Disciplined Minds was fired from Physics Today after admitting it was partially written during time at work.
anonregularreader 08.10.04 at 6:39 am
Guilty, guilty, guilty. Oh the shame.
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